I spoke with my teachers last week from the old school. Ah, how I love catching up with my great teachers. I just wish I can take my mother's idea for real and invite all of them for a nice dainty tea party at my house and talk till the cows come home (or till Malaysia runs out of tea, whichever comes first) because knowing I have no cows and that we will never finish all the tea, we can go on to talk till - well - until they need to go home.
My hair looks like grass now after the lawn-mower crashed due to a technical failure.
Or the typical Malaysian football field in residential areas after a 2-year drought.
I'm tempted to say like a garden sprayed with three aerosol cans of weed killer.
But that would be a hyperbole.
I stayed quiet through my haircut.
Out of a bit of shock, a bit of frustration, but mostly due to the resignation that what has been cut can't be put back...
University applications are intensely self-torturous. There's all these dark recesses of the human spirit that you’ve to dig into and explore in order to write the 'personal statement'. What more, once you've discovered the creeping shadows on the walls of your skull, you've to overcome the dilemma of revealing them.
Then I sound horribly egoistic and fake when I write almost every essay about what the 'I' had done, will want to do and is doing. I don't even know who is this personality I'm substituting myself with - someone made to sound very successful, confident and ambitious. I lack every one of those elements, except maybe success.
I think living is a success. And understanding that I’m alive, that I’ve a certain limited amount of free will and self-determinism, knowing that I don’t have to rely on a God for purpose and morals is a daily success for me. The best part of all this is knowing and being aware of how my views change...
College essays. I'm never quite comfortable with them.
I’ve been having worrying images - visions, if you like - of the future. Every where, every day and every thing springs up with this huge industrial neon-sign calling for applications to the universities of my choice. Then comes the criteria: smashing requirement after smashing requirement. Then comes the blow to the head: Tuition and boarding fees.
Blackout.
I blink open my dazed eyes, stars still swirling around. Financial Aid. Scholarships. The criteria bars are set even higher. The competition for their limited supply is ruthless and unforgiving. One wrong step, one wrong grade, one wrong decision and my entire future seems to crumble down.
But what future? Call me escapist, unambitious, or just indifferent to flashing billboards advertising "THIS WAY TO COLLEGE!", but I’ve no specific aspirations for a career or degree. All I dream of doing is to discover and continue to learn, to explore and to keep on thinking, to write and to never stop reading. Where I end up, where I go, as long as learning, thought, reading and writing are present, I don’t care.
It becomes rather hypocritical of me, then, to have such dreams built high up with Ivy League universities in mind. It is easy to be sucked into the society you live in. The one I come from is incessant over education plans, career ambitions and making it through university. It’s easy to forget that, in Emerson's words, "we're always planning to live, but never living".
If I wasn't in the least interested in my future, why should I worry about getting there?
It might seem overconfident to speak of the winds that brought me here, and to rely on the same winds to bring me forward. But I have faith in the winds.
It puts my mind somewhat at ease to know that I’ll not mind not getting a place at the universities of my choice, or getting the scholarships that I need to get there. It puts my mind at ease and at greater concentration for the 'now', to be ready to lift my wings and let the wind sweep me in its wave to wherever it may go.
I feel a cool breeze whispering in the night. Let me in on your secret!
Well the following message is the reply from me: Pei Ling This gal is one who saw me through my very worst, and celebrated with me at my very best. One who grew up with me through (almost) every stage of my life - from the time we were inseparable? (well we have been knowing each other for about ten years!) to the time we would stay up for hours talking in the phone; resulting in her knowing me so well that she was (and still is) able to trick me into thinking certain things and to finish some of my sentences (except the stupid ones).
For your information, Pei Ling is still single and available. She is extremely nice and friendly and caring and one of Ayumi Hamasaki's biggest fans! Anyone who wants to know this homo sapiesn can e-mail me. I will give you folks her contact number! :)
Here are the 25 most expensive colleges for 2008-2009, based on total cost (tuition + room and board). Whooie, this is some pricey book-learnin'.
Highest Total Cost 2008-2009
College | Total Cost 1. Sarah Lawrence College | $53,166 2. George Washington University | $50,312 3. New York University | $50,182 4. Georgetown University | $49,689 5. Connecticut College | $49,385 6. Bates College | $49,350 7. Johns Hopkins University | $49,278 8. Skidmore College | $49,266 9. Scripps College | $49,236 10. Middlebury College | $49,210 11. Carnegie Mellon University | $49,200 12. Boston College | $49,020 13. Wesleyan University | $49,000 14. Colgate University | $48,900 15. Claremont McKenna College | $48,755 16. Vassar College | $48,675 17. Haverford College | $48,625 18. University of Chicago | $48,588 19. Union College (NY) | $48,552 20. Colby College | $48,520 21. Mount Holyoke College | $48,500 22. Tufts University | $48,470 23. Bard College at Simon's Rock | $48,460 24. Franklin & Marshall College | $48,450 25. Bard College | $48,438
I dislike getting up early in the morning to go to work. It’s not that I dislike work. I dislike drag myself out of my bed when it’s still dark outside and when my eyes refuse to open, especially after having only a few hours of sleep because of watching television till late night. If only work would start a bit later then everything will be fine. Then I wouldn’t have to get up so early, I wouldn’t have to wait my turn to use the bathroom and best of all I wouldn’t have to jerk myself from my warm and comfortable bed.
However the moment I hit the crisp morning air on my way to work, my whole outlook changes. Ah, the cool air is invigorating. Life is wonderful. Work is beautiful will all my colleagues and surroundings.
Come weekends, it’s lovely to sleep late without worrying about getting to work on time. The joy of lying in bed, listening to the activities of living things going about their business is particularly pleasant. The dog barks, the birds sing, my mother makes breakfast and my younger brothers snore away on his bed like nobody’s business. I just close my eyes and do nothing.
However all good things must end and so it’s with lazing in bed. Sooner or later my mother would come and make us get up. It’s time again for the weekly house-cleaning. So much to do every week is not exactly fun. As the saying goes, “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”, mom should consider that we’ve other more interesting things to do and we’d spend time doing them. Life shouldn’t evolve around house chores only.
Grudgingly I’d go through the motions of work and gradually finish the chores by lunch. I always wonder why we must repeat the same chores every week. Can’t we let the grass grow a bit longer, the porch get a little dirtier? How much difference will a little neglect make? Precious little, I suppose.
Nevertheless, kids like me don’t have power and we’ve to listen to the grown-ups. So, much as I dislike these weekly chores, I have to do them. I promise that I’ll not do them when I grow up. And no, I’m not kidding. By then they’ll be done by my children, hopefully.
There are other things that I do not like to do, but there few in number. Most things do have some kind of loveliness in them. Just as the popular song goes “everything is beautiful, in its own way”. There is beauty around us in everything we do. I look at beautiful things and enjoy them. Distasteful things pale by comparison.
